Baldur's Gate The Baldur's Gate Series Thread

[Lilura]

Yeah, I was just going to say that I'm a bit in disbelief folks are complaining about Dorn.

An unneeded, OP addition to the game.

Steam achievements did it for me and I'm glad they did.

This user can safely be written off.

 

[d1nolore]

lol I agree, Steam achievements?, he has to be trolling.

 

[Piotrovitz]

Chill down, dude just obviously wants to enjoy the game and collect the potato-stamps for doing some particular shit in it - to each his own.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

I read it more as a subtle backhanded insult. It seems it was too subtle if it was. "OMG, objectives are so lame even steam achievements improve my desire to go on"...

 

[Lujo]

I read it more as a subtle backhanded insult. It seems it was too subtle if it was. "OMG, objectives are so lame even steam achievements improve my desire to go on"...

I didn't know I was being subtle about it, but yes that's kinda what I was saying. Like, rather explicitly.

Also, I said that a somewhat aimless open-world exploration game got better for me by applying arbitrary little meta quests to it to prod me in this or that direction? And this is cause enough to discount what I'm saying? :D

And, er, why so contorted at the mention of achievements? Fallout 1/2 had them with the different endings listing depending on what you did, and PST had in-game achievements in form of tattoos. They're older than some of you guys seem to think, and games who had that sort of thing in them are fondly remembered for it. BG could have used something like that. Since I bought it on Steam, it got at least the ones which come with Steam, so wth, it helped in my case.

 

[Alkarl]

I read it more as a subtle backhanded insult. It seems it was too subtle if it was. "OMG, objectives are so lame even steam achievements improve my desire to go on"...

I didn't know I was being subtle about it, but yes that's kinda what I was saying. Like, rather explicitly.

Also, I said that a somewhat aimless open-world exploration game got better for me by applying arbitrary little meta quests to it to prod me in this or that direction? And this is cause enough to discount what I'm saying? :D

And, er, why so contorted at the mention of achievements? Fallout 1/2 had them with the different endings listing depending on what you did, and PST had in-game achievements in form of tattoos. They're older than some of you guys seem to think, and games who had that sort of thing in them are fondly remembered for it. BG could have used something like that. Since I bought it on Steam, it got at least the ones which come with Steam, so wth, it helped in my case.

Are you playing Baldur's Gate or DA:I cause I seriously can't tell anymore.

Also, possessing meta-knowledge of a game != in-game achievements.

Besides, BG already rewards you for "doing stuff". Quest exp, items, plot. Achievments are anathema to proper game design. They encourage lazy play-styles and often detract from the experience. Instead of playing a game and being immersed in a world where you're free to make your own decisions, now you're just ticking boxes on an itemized list. Or following the developers intended, optimal route through the game. Maybe like following quest markers. The endings of Fallout were never meant to be gamed, they were a reflection of the actions your character took. For instance, it doesn't make much sense for a Fallout 1 protag to kill Killian to make sure that town flourishes thanks to Gizmo AND care a whole awful lot about Necropolis to fix their water situation. That character would need to be either clairvoyant (psycher) or schizophrenic.

 

[Lujo]

That's pretty subjective. You don't have to game achievements, you can just get them, and then if you want other ones you do something else and see that bit of the game. And wth do you mean "following the developers intended optimal route through a game?" - you mean noone's supposed to? How does that even...

Quest XP is a pretty non-specific kind of reward, you get it regardless of what you do, and unless it levels you up it's even more meaningless than arbitrary potato stamps. At least you get those for doing this or that specific thing. Way too many items are vendor junk or not even that, and most quests in the game are very simple and don't advance the plot at all. And the "plot" is a bit dense at times. Also, I like having achievements around because quests are easy to miss - I don't care about the rewards so much, just knowing what there is to even see.

And, err, who ever said anything about gaming achievements in Fallout? They were achievements, for all anyone knows that and PST might as well be where they took the concept from. I'm not even gaming the achievements in BG, if someone wants to get them all I bet you could just use the console and get them in 5 minutes...

 

[Dzupakazul]

Aside from how Dorn stands out like a mod NPC (unlike BG1 NPCs he talks to you all the time about stupid shit), he also annoys me on a fundamental level because he doesn't fit any sort of design or place in the world. It's just, "oh hey, we now have Half-Orcs, so let's make this dude a 19 STR Half-Orc and completely rip out Minsc's tiny little niche he enjoys, which is a two-handed sword wielding highest STR NPC in the game. And let's also give him our homebrewed unbalanced kit. And he also has his own personalized sword in a game where magic items are few and far in-between." He's honestly on the level of Chloe. And in spite of all that effort put into him, he really isn't any more interesting than the standard evil NPCs, especially in BG2.

 

[Piotrovitz]

It's pretty obvious that anything Beamdog touches turns into shit, so new NPC wouldn't be any diferent.

Having BG2 kits, they could add someone really interesting that people usually don't take on BG2 runs, like skald or bounty hunter or barbarian, or F/M multi. All of those would be fun to play and add some new flavour into BG1.

Instead they just threw OPd as fuck badass half-orc looking like WoW character, a basement dweller wet dream anime tumblr chick, and monk with generic, used to death personality, that is close to useless, because of his class mechanics having him like that at low levels.

There's absolutely no reedeming quality of any of the diarrhoea they called new content.

 

[Lacrymas]

Isn't the gameplay supposed to be the point in of itself? If you don't like that, how are achievements pushing you forward? It's your problem that you don't like the game, its enduring popularity and garnering of new fans proves that much. Maybe you should've stopped playing it altogether and came back to it a few years later with a fresh mind and fresh eyes. I wouldn't want to remember it as "the game which I only completed because of the arbitrary achievements" and never look at it again, while it is a classic and very much worth playing and enjoying.

Aside from how Dorn stands out like a mod NPC (unlike BG1 NPCs he talks to you all the time about stupid shit), he also annoys me on a fundamental level because he doesn't fit any sort of design or place in the world.

I think that's because of how Beamdog have remembered or played the game. The NPC Project mod is so ingrained in many people's minds that they somehow forget it isn't a part of the original game, I've seen people cite personality quirks of the companions which are only in the NPC Project. The way Beamdog handled it speaks to that broken-mirror-like conception. Either that or they wanted to make them like BG2, which would've been the wrong approach fundamentally. While the NPCs Beamdog added are overpowered (although I wouldn't say the Monk is, but I haven't tested him much), they aren't as grotesquely overpowered as people make them out to be. Evil companions in general are pretty OP, especially Edwin and Viconia. I'm not excusing them for making them so OP, I'm just putting them in context.

Dorn shouldn't have been a Blackguard, as he muscles out Shar-Teel for evil melee damage-dealer companion (he doesn't replace Minsc, as he's good), but what is done is done. There's no danger of accusing Beamdog of thinking through their decisions. Anyway, as far as what they added, he is the least problematic and cringe-y, his quest is nicely paced and his quest in BG2 has some nice C&C in the end. Credit where credit's due. Their biggest crime is making them so special snowflake-y, with powers and items up the butt. Even if they don't completely unbalance the game, it's still a bit of a faux pas.

 

[Baardhaas]

And, er, why so contorted at the mention of achievements? Fallout 1/2 had them with the different endings listing depending on what you did, and PST had in-game achievements in form of tattoos. They're older than some of you guys seem to think, and games who had that sort of thing in them are fondly remembered for it. BG could have used something like that. Since I bought it on Steam, it got at least the ones which come with Steam, so wth, it helped in my case.

The tattoos in PS:T give you a tangible reward in the game for making certain choices, and unlike steam achievements, are not listed at the tattoo parlor beforehand. The ending screens in Fallout also are about choices you've made during the game, and again, they're also not listed beforehand. Both of these deal with story reactivity.

Arbitrary challenges like getting -15 AC, kill 20 rats, or pick 10 pockets are there to tickle people's OCD. At best they provide an alternative to a lengthy tutorial by giving an incentive to try out various aspects of the game.

Also, I said that a somewhat aimless open-world exploration game got better for me by applying arbitrary little meta quests to it to prod me in this or that direction?

BG1 has a pen&paper feel to it. It doesn't really feature an open world per se, rather a somewhat lenient DM who lets his party explore while they travel along a clearly set storyline which is cut up in easy to absorb chapters and features gated off areas until you progress far enough with the main quest. Sure there are lots of almost empty maps. But they take under 10 minutes to fully explore. While seemingly big, these maps you can traverse don't make up such a large part of the game. They're there to convey the feeling of travelling between one point of interest and another.
It's like a D&D tabletop session where you choose to go off the beaten path. Your DM sighs, rolls his eyes and then the dice. Will there be an encounter? Yeah, some gibberlings, well how about that! (were you really expecting a whole new epic adventure just by walking in to the bush for no apparent reason?). Next time you're lucky, DM rolled his dice again and what do you know? You get a funny little encounter with an ogre who has a belt of genderbending (see, Bioware has always been an inclusive studio). It's mostly small little encounters that are completely optional and not connected to the main quest in any meaningful way, sometimes there is very nice loot to be had, but even there they didn't went overboard.

You can play the game by following the storyline, or you can wander around and stall your main quest for a very, very long time. If you got tired of checking out all the maps, for no apparent reason other than that they were available, you should have picked up the main quest again. Unless you couldn't be bothered by the main quest in the first place, in which case the game is obviously not for you. I can't imagine how any amount of steam achievements can possibly fix that.

 

[ga♥]

PST tatoos are not achievements and they do not break the 4th wall. Any quest reward is a an achivement now ? Low quality trolling.

 

[SCO]

Achievements are dumb in principle, but those that track something more than # of repetitions are tolerable (as long as it's for your own use to be able to tell there is something 'possible' there - and never explain what - not to show off).

I mean, even Torment had a quest where you had to hunt 100 cranium rats, but at least it wasn't a fucking achievement.

 

[Lujo]

I mean, even Torment had a quest where you had to hunt 100 cranium rats, but at least it wasn't a fucking achievement.

Actually, no, that wasn't a quest. It's a conversatin where you have to EAT 100 cooked rats, not noted anywhere in game, doable through one conversation. It's literally something completely arbitrary that hands you a semi honorary skin sticker. And it's not in any way possible to know it's doable in-game. It's almost a definition of achievement, and a particularly dumb one because it requires pressing two dialogue options for a long time without having any indication that there's some point to it. Very similar thing about continuing to search the database in Fallout 2 an endless number of times until you bug the computer out.

Tattoos are also not quest rewards. No quest even mentions you obtaining them, and if you just read the descriptions they're literaly achievement descriptions. I would not be surprised to learn for fact that this is exactly where the whole concept of achievement actually came from, those damned tattoos in PST.

You guys are seriously overreacting to the whole concept of achievements. They've been there all along and you're all being a bunch of edgelords :D

And as for whether BG is or isn't for me - it isn't and I knew it isn't, I just wanted to share something that made someone who doesn't appreaciate the game very much to play it start to finish for the first time since it's been made despite giving it a shot a few times. I've only got a few more things to do, and I'm so tired of it that there's literally nothing motivating me to do it but some completionism that happens to be coming from the achievements. Sure isn't coming from the game.

And you're seriously overreacting to the Beamdog companions, the rest of the companions are mostly lousily voiced stock fantasy crap, and so are these when you get down to it. Why Beamdog thought more companions are what's needed is beyond me, there's too many of them as-is, but you guys come across as serious weirdos for being so bent out of shape over it. You can literally ignore them. I ignored most of the original ones AND most of the new ones. I didn't even notice the new guys were new until I figured out that some companions go back to the inn when you reform the party, and some don't and then figured out that it's the new ones which do, and that's kinda nice. EDIT: I'd prefer them not initiating dialogue all the time, too, that is annoying, but to me they really aren't any different than the original ones. Even less iritating than some, honestly.

 

[Anomander Rake]

Eat 100 cranium rats? What is supposed to happen?

All I did was hunting them after I taunted the big entity composed by many of these rats. And to be honest I simply trashed them all until he surrendered to me and gave me what I was looking for... a memory.

 

[Fairfax]

Eat 100 cranium rats? What is supposed to happen?

All I did was hunting them after I taunted the big entity composed by many of these rats. And to be honest I simply trashed them all until he surrendered to me and gave me what I was looking for... a memory.

It's not 100. IIRC you have to get a few cranium rat tails and then kill a wererat.

 

[Anomander Rake]

Understood, thanks. And then, what happens?

 

[Lujo]

Eat 100 cranium rats? What is supposed to happen?

All I did was hunting them after I taunted the big entity composed by many of these rats. And to be honest I simply trashed them all until he surrendered to me and gave me what I was looking for... a memory.

That's misinformation while trying to look knowledgeable, the "kill them part". There's a random guy (named, C something, in front of the Office of Vermin Control) who sells baked (and boiled and charred etc) rats in-conversation. If you eat one nothing happens. If you eat a hundred one by one, you get a tattoo. It gives minor and irrelevant bonuses. It's not a quest, it's an easter egg which gives you an achievement tattoo.

It's also impossible to know this without looking at the game files, because there's just nothing that indicates that eating the rats will ever result in anything, and it takes several button pressess to eat one. And you have to do that a 100 times.

 

[Anomander Rake]

ah yeah I understood. Thanks. I did that in my game. I still don't know how to use the emoticons on other's post, so consider yourself brofisted.

 

[Lujo]

Hover mouse over post, emoticon appear. Click on the one you want.

 

[Anomander Rake]

No emoticon appears when hovering my mouse over your post. Is there an area in particular I'm supposed to move my cursor over? Left side links to your profile. Right side won't make any emoticon appear.

 

[agris]

your account needs to be at least a year old to 'rate' posts.

 

[Anomander Rake]

Ah, I didn't know that. Thank you. Brofist also to you <3.

 

[Fairfax]

Eat 100 cranium rats? What is supposed to happen?

All I did was hunting them after I taunted the big entity composed by many of these rats. And to be honest I simply trashed them all until he surrendered to me and gave me what I was looking for... a memory.

That's misinformation while trying to look knowledgeable, the "kill them part". There's a random guy (named, C something, in front of the Office of Vermin Control) who sells baked (and boiled and charred etc) rats in-conversation. If you eat one nothing happens. If you eat a hundred one by one, you get a tattoo. It give minor and irrelevant bonuses. It's not a quest, it's an easter egg which gives you an achievement tattoo.

It's also impossible to know this without looking at the game files, because there's just nothing that indicates that eating the rats will ever result in anything, and it takes several button pressess to eat one. And you have to do that a 100 times.

You're right: Tattoo of Devouring Vermin.

 

[Lujo]

Well, thank you. I, er, know I'm right? Before the Baldurs Gate run I did 3 consecutive bugtesting PST runs and turned every rock over because I need to mod up a new spell and item description template (and maybe get Beamdog to actually fix a bunch of bugs). I just decided to give BG a shot before I get to work. I knew about that tattoo but that's one thing I never did before despite playing through PST many times because just standing there pointlessly clicking those dialogue options over and over was so pointless. But I had to test whether it works. The BG steam achivements are actually fun in comparison.

There's a kind of simmilar thing with the computer in Vault City and searching the database a million times in Fallout 2. Can't remember what exactly it gives you. It's possible there's even a hint to that, and a tangible reward, though, but I'm not sure anymore.